I walked along Galata Bridge, in the dreamlight. The city skyline appeared on the horizon, the blue, swaying waves of the Bosphorus below, and above me, birds wheeling free in the sky, against the backdrop of the towering domes and minaret spires of the ancient city of Istanbul.
City of the world’s desire, the majesty of Osman’s dream. I walked alone by these silent waters, and as I walked, I imagined life as a bird, flying high above the Hagia Sophia and the Sultanahmet Mosque, soaring into the freedom of the city horizon.
Where could I possibly go from here, now that I had arrived at the centre of the world?
Galata Bridge was the bridge into the east, metaphorically and literally, the beginning of a new life. From here, all my journeys into the stories and cultures of Asia began. It was like a heartbeat in a childhood dream, the scene of a new beginning.
Along the bridge a line of fishermen stood, casting their lines out into the Bosphorus sea, reeling in their catch and letting the fish loose, slithering into the buckets below. A fisherman turned to face me, white baseball cap, heavy moustache, nodding curtly with a simple “Merhaba”, with a grave but friendly disposition. In his cupped hands was a squirming fish, tossing and writhing around, the slippery prize of his evening meal. I smiled and nodded back.
The salty air in my lungs, a clear head at one with the scene before me. I was so at peace. I was here. I looked out at the swaying water, and lines from Rumi came to me:
“A strange passion is moving in my head.
My heart has become a bird
which searches in the sky.
Every part of me goes in different directions.
Is it really so
that the one I love is everywhere?”
Istanbul dreaming, here was my love, all around me on the silent waters of the Bosphorus in the sunrise.
I continued my walk into the south, into the winding Islamic streets. The Hagia Sophia, a magnificent mosque with a circular dome is one of the architectural wonders of the world. There I whiled away a couple of hours beneath the roof of the colossal circular dome, reverberating with the echoing voices of tourists. As Procopius wrote, this place “exults in an indescribable beauty”. I headed into the Sultanahmet Mosque opposite. Here I tread slowly on the plush red carpets in my socks, gazing at the blue tiles inside. Large windows opened up to the flooding sunlight, falling softly on a group of men on their knees kneeling down and prostrating themselves under the enormous, ornate chandeliers above.
From here, I continued walking. The streets around the grand bazaar are claustrophobic with activity, and teeming with life, colour and excitement. Many a weary traveller has entered this maze of marketplace alleys, sold the shirt on their back and returned later to another stall, and haggling down, purchased it back for a lower price.
I stood here for a while, absorbing the bustle of the city’s busy momentum. I was contemplating a scene on this hilly street when suddenly a porter came bounding towards me, and I jumped to the side in an instinct to save my life. He almost ran me down, hurtling towards me at the end of the alley downhill, wheeling a heavy load over twice his size behind him in a trundling rush when we almost collided. At the bottom of the hilly street, another porter moving horizontally had almost collided with him too. I turned around, dusting myself down and looked at them both. After an initial exchange of insults, immediately the bottom porter saluted him, “güle güle!” - go with laughter. The porters were everywhere in the back streets, alive with the chaos of a thousand street scenes, dramas and incidents, forgotten with the hustle of the coming day.
In “Stamboul Sketches”, John Freely writes of these porters, or hamals as they are called, who “carry much of the city’s trade and commerce on their strong backs, for they can transport their loads through steep and narrow alleys where carts and trucks could never pass. These underpaid atlases stagger across the bridge bearing burdens truly herculean; baskets piled high with black mountains of coal; bristling thickets of kindling wood; whole bakeries of stacked bread loaves; entire factories of machine parts; crowded roomfuls of furniture, including refrigerators and grand pianos... they still shuffle along patiently, experts on the cobblestones of this town”.
I moved along, continuing to walk. Among the hilly back streets of the old city, I came across a street with a line of restaurants, and I gazed at the scene inside as I walked by. A party of people laughing together, singing and dancing in jubilant celebration, an outpouring of joy, happiness and triumph. I had never seen such genuine happiness, the honesty of celebration. People of the city with nothing to celebrate than the happy euphoria of tonight. It is a fine art, this search for ecstasy, for I will never know their lives.
A strangeness in my mind, there was something in the way. A sorrow from elsewhere, the “feeling that I was not for that hour, not for that place”. The poem by Wordsworth gave rise to Orhan Pamuk’s novel A Strangeness in my Mind, where the protagonist spends his life walking in the back streets of Istanbul selling boza, a fermented yoghurt drink from the history of Istanbul’s memories, where “walking fuelled his imagination and reminded him that there was another realm within our world, hidden away behind the walls of a mosque, in a collapsing wooden mansion, or inside a cemetery.”
Seeking to get under the skin of the city and all of its stories, “sometimes I would see them not as mementos of the blissful hours but as the tangible precious debris of the storm raging in my soul.” Like Pamuk, I was exploring my own personal pain, in this living museum of innocence, pining for a lost love from the corridors of memory. Like Pamuk’s novel, exploring “the gap between compassion and surrender (that) is love’s darkest, deepest region”. I was here, and I walked among the Istanbul shadows.
I wound my way downhill, past the Yeni camii mosque and the spice bazaar, and found myself back along the sea-front, where I sat down by the promenade and drank an orange juice freshly squeezed from a street-side stall. Here I gazed at the choppy waters of the Bosphorus, on a clear, cloudless day. The sea all around me, with the hooting ferries gliding by, I remembered the words from Along the Bosphorus, where Pamuk wrote:
“When there is not a breath of wind, the waters sometimes shudder as if from inside and take on the finish of washed silk.”
Here I watched the sun set gently and the darkness envelop the fading glow of the sky, into twilight. I observed all of the people passing by, making their lonely way home as darkness was about to fall. In Stamboul Sketches, John Freely described this scene, when the sun has dropped behind the mosques above the Golden Horn, the magic hour in Istanbul, writing of another time:
“Ramshackle folk buses and public taxis rattle down the avenues like old street-dogs, never quite pointed straight ahead. The men of Stamboul are headed home, if they have one, from their work or from their idleness. Teahouses resound with the slap of playing cards, the click of tavla-counters, and the debates of unshaven and unelected parliaments. Fruit sellers polish shining galleries of apples, hang chandeliers of bananas, weave tapestries of onions and garlic, construct black pyramids of olives...from every house and shop in Istanbul radio blares and the street hums with the melancholy music of the saz. Street vendors fill the night air with the enticing smells of hot corn and roasting chestnuts and bakeries incense the neighbourhood with the sacramental odour of hot bread”.
As autumn turns to winter in Istanbul, there is beauty in this fading glow. For “with the beginning of the autumnal rains the sun is gone until spring and we are left with only the palest and most indigenous of the city’s colours. In the diffuse winter light which casts no shadows wet cobbles shine in the rain and the lead domes of mosques are brighter than swords. Seen from the Galata bridge, Stamboul seems a grey ruin worn down by freezing rain and the Golden Horn becomes a polluted moat filled with the bloated corpses of the city’s past. But when all hope seems gone and we are about to surrender to our annual midwinter gloom, we are briefly cheered by the amber glow from a teahouse door, or by the sight of lamplight refracted in the stained-glass windows of an old mosque. And as we stroll across the bridge under the arctic light of a winter moon, we observe that the grey old city is indeed imperial”.
In the moonlight, the chiaroscuro of the glowing street-lamps etched itself on the street scenes of memories gone by. They were forever captured in fading photographs, silhouettes in the moonlight.
There is a darkness here, a melancholy beyond words. It is described as the hüzün, a profound sadness that is everywhere in the heart of things. Orhan Pamuk, in his book “Istanbul”, the city where he has lived his entire life, traces the sadness to the lost world of the Ottoman empire and the slow disappearance of its magnificent cultural gifts and the loss of cultural identity, in these lonely, darkened streets. There is melancholy in the literature, the music, the films, the art of Istanbul, melancholy in its very heart. It is like tristesse, a communal feeling shared by millions, an atmosphere in the cold morning air of winter by the Bosphorus, or walking at night in the snow through the hilly back streets of the old city, among the lamplights illuminating nothing.
As the outstanding scholar Justin Marozzi sweeps across Pamuk’s evocation of memory, “the bitter-sweet hüzün still stalks the city in the memories of the old wooden yalis mansions on the Bosphorus, in the dilapidated ferries lurching from Kadıköy to Karaköy, in the crumbling tekkes or dervish monasteries, the teahouses packed with unemployed men, the apartment buildings discoloured by dirt, rust and soot, in ships’ horns booming through the fog, in the once glorious now broken marble drinking fountains”, for according to Pamuk, “it is resignation that nourishes Istanbul’s inward looking soul”.
I saw it too, it was what drew me here. Among the darkness of night, I walked for hours through the streets of Istanbul. A lone figure emerged from the back alleys in the lamplit maze of night, a lost child searching for stories from the world. I saw myself, a child of the back streets of this melancholy place, forever searching, forever lost.
I walked into the night, alone. Wrong turns in the pitch-black, among the hilly streets, when paths forked and narrowed in the blackness, hand against stone to guide the way. I came eventually to a dead end. Here, the concrete street was illuminated by moonlight. The only sound was the creak of a clothes-line taut between the top-floor windows of two adjacent houses above me, the washing hanging, swaying in the wind.
Curtains drawn, lives inside buried in sleep. I carried on in the darkness, and came to a scene of a street lit by amber, the lamplights falling gently on a fading dream from elsewhere. Among the street-lamps, yellow draping over the pitch-black path. I saw a street dog scuttle across the view, ducking and weaving into the back alleys, disappearing from view, moving lightly over the dusty pavement kissed by the streetlights, like glowing embers.
Roaming among the night people of Istanbul, the poor, the dispossessed, the outcasts in their night-haze. I saw a man with his head buried in a rubbish bin like an ostrich, hunger in the gut.
As I walked along, I heard a melancholy song in the night air, somewhere perhaps from the opened door of a nearby mosque, like the song of the wandering minstrels of old, that “evoke by their songs the remembrance of absent friends and distant countries, so that the souls of their hearers grow melancholy”. Evliya Çelebi, who for forty years travelled the Ottoman lands, heard the music of history in the atmosphere of the ancient city streets.
I too heard the music within me, like the sound of the ney, the reed-flute playing its lugubrious song of separation, so brilliantly described in Kudsi Erguner’s “Journeys of a Sufi Musician”. Emerging from the silence, the music echoes within myself, exploring all the love and mystery within, seeking a deeper understanding of the conscious and undefined feelings driving me on.
I always thought that music was the only thing that could express the emotions and love that could never be shared in words; as Nietzsche wrote, “music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent”.
I never dreamed that I would not be misunderstood by you. Yet if I could express myself honestly, like music, I could explain my feelings, and not keep them deep within me. The feeling for you is like music within. You are so beautiful to me that now, it is too hard to speak to you. I wish I could speak to you, but the words won’t come. We express ourselves in the only way we know how to. And I do not want it to be silence.
Maybe one day my words will speak, and you will hear them like music - and the music will find the words for me to speak. I wish that I could give you what you are giving me - that you will be able to speak, and I will listen.
Stamboul sketches of silence, night and dreams. Now I am far away from love. And you are gone, like breath on the wind, carried by the night air.
As I continued to walk, I could not dwell on internal landscapes, as a taxi drove towards me, and I looked at it straight-on, the child in the front seat gazing dreamily into the night, looking through me to the lamp-light behind.
Fragments of feeling someone else’s pain. People of the night, ghosts that cast no shadow. Men huddled in a bundle wrapped around them like mummies in the cold, seeking shelter and the temporary release of sleep. Drifters under the stars, Istanbullus without names. Fallen women in back-street houses never seen, drunkards knocked out flat by the pleasures of the grape, face down on the cold street.
I stood to contemplate the scene. Then a little girl ran up to me. She was with her mother, they were begging. But she was smiling so happily, that the joy and goodness in her innocent eyes was one of the most pure and lovely things I had ever seen. They did not want anything from me, nor did they press for money. The little girl dashed towards me and pulled the trigger of an imaginary camera. And this is how I ended up taking her portrait. It was one of the sweetest things I had experienced, that when people have nothing to eat or money to spend, they invest in each other. And their happiness and childish joy can never be extinguished.
Journey to the end of the night, I walked into the heart of nowhere. And here was my photograph, a black silhouette of a boy, like a ghost. Neon-lit signs above him, the ember glow like gold lighting up the hill as the street looks deep into the distant horizon, and the child carries on his weary journey into the unknown. My personal favourite photograph of all my work, it became the front cover of this book.
The beauty in sadness on this journey by moonlight, the photograph, an art-work on its own terms, should be interpreted by the emotions it evokes in the subjective eyes of the viewer. Yet to me, it represents the displacement and alienation of the thoughtful and sensitive individual in the modern world. The child is a symbol of hope and innocence and a life-long journey from the darkness, into the light.
In “The Museum of Innocence”, Pamuk asked: “why was it that in such moments of unhappiness, anger and misery, I could find pleasure in nocturnal walks through the desolate streets with only my dreams to keep me company? Why, instead of the sun-drenched postcard views of Istanbul that tourists so loved, did I prefer the semi-darkness of the back streets, the evenings and cold winter nights, the ghost people passing through the light of the pale streetlamps, the cobblestone views, their loneliness?”
I do not know. Darkness is a challenge that induces a journey into inner peace and balance of mind. It is an engagement with reality begun by overcoming loss. I speak as an artist - suffering is the drive. All artists will agree - beautiful art is driven by suffering, a universal law, written by Rumi:
“The only rule is - suffer the pain”.
And as Pamuk wrote:
“The city’s more beautiful at night, you know: the people of the night always tell the truth.”
As I continued to walk, I suddenly saw that the darkness around me had turned into light and the first rays of sunlight among the cold mist awakened into dawn.
I continued my journey, back across the Galata bridge, into the north, the new Istanbul on the European side, the area of Pera and beyond, the glitz of a dynamic city unfolding, and the stories youngsters would tell of the development and urban sprawl of their modern lives.
Strolling through istanbul, like the eponymous book by Hilary Sumner-Boyd, I wound my way across the shores of the Bosphorus, past the fishermen making their morning catch and I climbed up the steep, winding path to Galata itself.
Truly the most beautiful and atmospheric part of Istanbul, these narrow, cobbled streets run up the top of the hill, into the district of Beyoğlu, around a courtyard area by the Galata Tower. The area is cosmopolitan and exudes a Bohemian, hipster vibe. Young people are all around, and the cafe culture thrives among the momentum of people flowing through these busy cobblestone streets.
On one of the most atmospheric Beyoğlu streets, during a narrow climb to the top, one passes a row of shops selling music instruments, and cafes and restaurants where it is difficult not to rest and consume an Iskender kebap, before reaching the top, whereby one is thrust into İstiklal Avenue, the main shopping street of European Istanbul, among a sea of people on a drive to shop, and little else, in a sea of Starbucks, McDonalds and cellphone outlets that permeate the area, all the way from here to Taksim Square.
This was an affluent, modern city of newly-found wealth and commercial development, but I needed more. I longed to return to the heart of this city I love, so my walk took me winding back downhill to the Bosphorus shore.
Here I walked along the water once again. I longed for nothing more than to walk along the Bosphorus shore on this clear, sunny day, but everywhere I walked, luxury hotels blocked the view to the sea. Each hotel was an area of exclusion, no path ran along the shore any more, and the walk was fragmented by frequent stoppages, as the traveller is forced inwards into the city, to trek along the dangerous road, ducking and weaving among the speeding yellow taxis, hand thrust out, open palm in front of the yellow taxi drivers to stop their relentless taxis dead, that spurt fumes into what is often one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
I walked on, until I came to the district of Beşiktaş along the northern shore, and once again the magic of the city re-emerged. At the scene of a small plaza by the waterside, past the seagulls eating crumbs from the outstretched hands of passers-by, stands the Ortaköy Mosque. One of the most picturesque, intimate and atmospheric mosques in the whole of the city, this small mosque was re-built by the Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid by the Armenian father and son Garabet Amira Balyan and Nigoğayos Balyan between 1854 and 1856 during the Tanzimat, the re-organisation of the Ottoman empire that sought to integrate the ethnic minorities among its vast empire in an effort for inclusion and stability.
I ducked my head inside this delightful mosque, and was greeted by a vision of heavenly inner peace. The light flooded into the room, which was coloured in cream and white, with calligraphy in gold. The creamy white-brown softness of the opulent carpets was caressed gently by the cascading light from the tall windows, and enormous, lavish chandeliers dazzled with hanging crystals embellished with gold.
I sat here for a while and meditated on the serenity of the scene. But a rolling stone ought not to dwell too long in one place with idle hands, lest it gather moss, for there was and is true beauty still to await. Everywhere around were stories waiting to be experienced. “Wherever you look, you see a novel”, wrote the Turkish 19th Century author Ahmed Midhat, among the drama of people’s lives unfolding in the open.
I exited the mosque and started winding once more inland, uphill. I came to Cihangir, one of the most atmospheric neighbourhoods in the whole of Istanbul. The houses here retain a serene air of relaxed tranquility, and from their high balconies is the vantage point over the whole of the Bosphorus flowing by, the ferries sailing on in the distance, the birds wheeling in the sky on a fine autumn day. When I am tired of the adventure of life, settling to the area of Cihangir is how I would like to retire to a home in this world at the end of all my journeys.
Here on the Cihangir streets were the sweetest cats, wild cats strolling along, purring with content. Everywhere I turned, I followed the street cats, filling my heart with sweetness. I got down to cat-level, laying down on the floor of the street, and started to photograph. By a crumbling çeşme water fountain I came upon a portrait of the little striped cat-lion, his large eyes shining lustrous-green from his small, round face, waiting to be cuddled and stroked behind the ear. I later called him Aslan, the Persian and Azerbaijani word for lion. He was like a little lion, his eyes luminous, proud, fierce and free. I washed my face in the water of the fountain, and once again started to walk.
How could I be so wrong in my first impressions of Istanbul? When I first arrived here from Amsterdam, my impressions were not positive. I asked myself what I was doing here, and how my life had taken me to an empty, desolate place. It was not until I walked on the Galata bridge that I witnessed the beauty of the city of the word’s desire. Photography in Amsterdam and Vienna was hard, with so much of Europe uniform and dull. After working hard, exploring for days, I was only able to come away with a few photographs. Yet here in Istanbul, photographic scenes were everywhere I looked. “Live, and life will give you pictures”, Henri Cartier-Bresson once said. It certainly seemed that here in Istanbul one was free to live to seize the day to the full, and live.
Beauty overwhelmed me here, but the weary traveller needs a little rest. I made my way to one of the many cafes of Istanbul. Some of the best cafes are found here, serving artisan lattes, tastefully and stylishly designed, with their polished wooden coffee-bar counters and plush brown leather sofas. Coffee culture is a true interest, giving any city a breath of life, an interest not to be hidden among the academic nature of this book.
I sat in a stylish cafe in Beyoğlu. I got talking with Aytaç, a professional racing driver. An educated, cultured resident of Istanbul, he represented the aspirations of the new Turkey, making a living from managing his family’s hotel and racing for the thrill and enjoyment of sport. We talked about the history and culture of Istanbul, and the process of creating photography here. The Turkish people were some of the most friendly, open and honest people I have ever met. One is often welcome to strike up intellectual conversations in one of the many hip cafes of Istanbul, and come away having connected and learned from new friends from the road.
Often I would come to my favourite cafe. I sat here in the cafe and read. I pondered the Turkish psyche and the new city, and sought to place it in the splendid history of what had floated by on the tide of time, on these choppy waves. Istanbul is the only city in the world that is both in Europe and Asia, growing on two sides of the golden horn, connecting the two continents by a bridge. To the east is the further city deep in the heart of Asia. These three shorelines comprise the Golden Horn, around the central blue waves of the Bosphorus sea.
The history of Istanbul is a story that has often been told, in books such as Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities, where Bettany Hughes provides an engaging narrative of the city’s rich cultural past. Its beginnings as a Greek settlement developed into the world of Byzantium, a Christian empire overseen by Roman emperors such as Constantine, who ruled over a city that was seen as impregnable, fortified by the city walls protecting it from seaward invasion from the armies of the east. Yet in 1453, the city fell to the Ottomans, Turkic invaders from Anatolia, led by Mehmet the Conqueror, carrying the flag of Islam in his wake. Islam spread across the city, resulting in a rich tapestry of architecture, and like a red and gold Turkish carpet intricately woven with a thousand threads, the city became, and arguably is, the most diverse in the world. Turks, Greeks, Armenians, Jews, European Genoese traders, and all number of different ethnicities of peoples often lived and loved together in harmony among these city streets, as they still do.
From Topkapi palace, the Sultan of the Ottomans ruled over a harem of the most beautiful girls captured as slaves from all around the world, as the Ottoman empire spread out across Asia and west into Europe, having conquered the Balkans and knocked at the gates of Vienna, almost conquering the heartland of the Austro-Hungarian world. In the east, the Ottomans ruled over countries such as Egypt, Syria and Palestine, bringing with them a rich culture of art and architecture gleaned from the madrassas of the Dar al Islam, the Islamic world.
The Ottoman empire was subject to developments in intellectual and scientific modes of thought, and as early as the reign of Mahmud II in 1808, scientific ideas, influenced by the medical writings of scholars such as Sanizadeh were sponsored by the machinery of the state. A government report from this time stated that “it is evident that the acquisition of science and skill comes above all other aims and aspirations of a state...nothing can be done without the acquisition of science”. There was a genuine effort to introduce progressive ideas, such as those of the scholar Ibrahim Sinasi, the journalist, poet and linguist, acting as a catalyst for scientific and literary networks forming in the life of the city, that were later to culminate in the constitutional monarchy of 1876.
Yet the challenge faced in the 1860s, that of the literacy level of Ottoman adults having stood at 15%, compared to 40% for adult males in Japan, is likely to be an anachronism independent of religious causality; any true religious dogmatism had been moved away from many years before then, and as Christopher de Bellague’s “Islamic Enlightenment” shows, the western conception of Islamic countries as somehow being stagnant or resistant to change is wrong.
Following its expansion and subsequent internal consolidation, the Ottoman empire is said to have fallen into disrepair and inefficiency, a tale told in books such as Eugene Rogan’s “The Fall of the Ottomans” and “A History of the Middle East” by Peter Mansfield. It was not an aggressive warmongering machine such as found in western European nations. Rather it looked inwards, and conducted an intricate and elaborate network of bureaucracy and administration that hampered its economic growth, as well as indebtedness to countries in the west, to whom Sultan Abdulaziz incurred debts and granted concessions in an effort to import western ideas and modes of thought.
Yet, perhaps for the first time, a major world empire had moved away from principles of individualistic and adversarial money-making driven by conflict, and in many cases allowed its citizens, artisans and liberal thinkers to flourish in a creative life of culture and artistic pursuit. From the Ottomans’ achievements here in the arts, among their materialistic shortcomings, to accompany their willingness and receptivity to ideas from the west, as well as further east, surely something can be learned.
Countries such as Britain sniffed out the Ottoman weakness in brute force; at first they targeted the former Ottoman protectorate of Egypt, creating large levels of indebtedness; they then attacked the people in a bloodthirsty war, in order to exploit its resources and suffering people, at the moment they had almost finally achieved their freedom from their tyrannical Egyptian rulers. A tense situation arose during World War I, and the Ottomans sided with Germany, in order to protect the countries at the edge of their empire against Russian encroachment. The Allied forces, including the British, French and Americans attacked the Turkish land teeming with a multitude of cultures held together under the Ottoman flag, and they picked the empire apart.
This was however not enough to satisfy their greed, and after consolidating their power over the people of Egypt, the British now took Iraq and Transjordan, and the French took Syria and Lebanon under the Sykes-Picot “agreement”, causing further suffering and agony for ordinary Islamic people, whose story was rarely told. And following these shameful British actions of war driven by money, the Americans financed the setting up of the state of Israel by evicting Palestinians from their homes and unleashing a cycle of bloody violence, death and suffering that carries on to this day.
On the losing side, the Turks regathered. Later the national leader Mustafa Kemal “Ataturk” did all he could to drive Turkey to become like the west, banning traditional customs, introducing the latin alphabet, and instituting programs that encouraged the “westernisation” of Turkey, which was seen as the “modernisation” of Turkey, and was therefore was seen a progressive, superior state. Such was the state we found Istanbul in, in its third phase of the tale of three cities.
But what has this vast history resulted in now? It has resulted in a great diversity of people, architecture influenced by religions across the spectrum of human belief and positive aspirations, and has resulted in beauty across the spectrum of the artistic sphere. Most importantly however, the city itself is a living monument to aesthetics, a living, breathing museum exhibit and to me, still one of the most beautiful and exciting cities in the world.
It is the atmosphere, the friendly, open and hospitable people of all nationalities that call this city their home. They are free to live creatively and independently, so long as they follow an ethical code in their public life, that while sometimes perceived as being strict by the western world, shows a concern and desire to act well towards the family, the poor and their neighbours all around in need of respect and compassion. As for the so-called strictness, it is not generally understood. It is merely a drive for ethical regulation and a protective measure against the perceived stereotype of dysfunctional societies riddled with crime, inequality and lack of education, such as those perceived to be found in America. The Turks are often idealistic people, wishing for a cohesive society that melds together its diverse citizens socially, culturally and economically, in a holistic way.
Istanbul is a highly liberal, modern city, at times glitzy, with a vibrant night-life of young people, living up the good times that their exciting city allows. Today they live in an economically prosperous country, that has been steadily trading with all its neighbours, both with Europe and with Asia, with pragmatism and moderation. Journalists such as Alev Scott, in “Turkish Awakening: Behind the Scenes of Modern Turkey” report of a moderate country that has learnt from its history. It is said that every country in the world is a product of its geographical location. In the case of Istanbul, its location is at the centre of the meeting point between Europe and Asia. Turkey has been trading with and gaining the knowledge of the best of both the continents’ cultures and systems, and melding them together into its own pragmatic world. It has few protectionist or insular trading measures, and is a happy trading partner to most countries in the world.
Still, there is a strong sense of nationalism, and what it is to be Turkish, and put the Turkish interest first, though it is often a cultural pride. Certainly, Islam is less often a religious practice and way of life, with religious fanaticism rarely encountered. Islam is more often a badge of cultural identity, a kind of identification with history and culture. Pride in this often stems from the aesthetic and cultural achievements of the Turks, and not because of a perceived superiority or confrontational attitude towards other peoples or cultures of the world. While strolling in Istanbul, this is everywhere evident, in a peaceful, tolerant and open city of the greatest diversity. Behind the shop with a red flag fluttering in the Istanbul wind, one might find a friendly shopkeeper happy to engage with any stranger and tell them the story of his life.
I write with idealism, because there is much to be idealistic about. Certainly it is not a perfect society. Uncertainty over the motivations of the peoples at the country’s border areas and the desire to hold a strong, cohesive government structure with a clear direction and goal for the ethical well-being of its citizens appears to be in conflict with western ideas of individual rights, though such western commentators often fail to perceive the reasons why the Turkish government comes down hard on those that seek to disrupt the order and peace of the Turkish society with the western dissidents’ agitations and ideas of what individual freedom means. This book is not the place for a detailed discussion of current affairs independent of their historical context. This book is predominantly a work of cultural analysis.
My love for and idealism of Istanbul and Turkey is motivated by cultural idealism. It can be achieved through the arts and it is often done. This is because there is scope here for beauty in many cultural spheres. There are so many elements of the Turkish aesthetic that are unique, colourful, beautiful and exciting. They are found in their raw form everwhere one looks. The artist, writer or intellectual can develop the seeds of the beauty that they see, through their art. There is so much material here, because the country is so diverse. People talk of cities such as London being diverse, yet anyone who stays in Istanbul will see, that here is the greatest cultural diversity.
It is a golden time for the arts here, with new art forms such as the cinema. The films of Reha Erdem, for example, are infused with the most captivating, luminous beauty of aesthetic cinematography, where the landscapes of Anatolia are portrayed through a lens that gives a significance to the beauty of the ordinary characters’ lives among the Anatolian plains, and the tragedy, honour and ideals of their lives at one with the landscape around them. Even for the people that live on a dinner of herbs, their friendly, open and hospitable nature is vividly brought to life by writers such as Carla Grissman in her engaging book.
And in “The Wild Pear Tree”, Nuri Bilge Ceylan directed a truly outstanding film on what it means to be an artist and the challenges an emerging artist faces in the modern world. The protagonist, Sinan, wants to become a writer, and the film follows his life, his experiences and setbacks, and finally his return home to re-engage with his family, to finally understand what is truly important in this world, no matter what its sham, drudgery and disappointment have done his dreams. It is not the fame or recognition that being a writer might afford, but the respect and love of those around you, that truly understand your work, even if your book will never be read by the world.
That such a film of high ideals and social dissection was made in Turkey is tantamount to the optimism and belief in significant art by the Turkish film industry, against all the commercialisation and deadening of the artistic spirit found all over the developed industrial world, in whose film industries such a film would probably never have been made or financed. The central message is of the engagement with one’s home, the learning from the sad comfort of the simple lives of your family around you in the place where you have grown up, where you planted the Wild Pear Tree. And in itself this speaks volumes about the communal and cultural affinity and warmth found on the Anatolian plains.
I remembered my first journey out to the Anatolian plains, where I eventually came to Pamukkale, in west-central Turkey. In my series of photographs, “Into the White”, all one sees is an expanse of white, with blue pools shimmering in the distance. A blizzard of white minimalism, it is a truly unique place in the world. The whiteness is a true element of mystery, as the pure, bleached whiteness is not snow, nor is it sand. It is calcium. Calcium deposits that have built up through history, giving this landscape a truly unique view, a sight seen only in the whiteness of dreams.
I was once delighted with the way my artwork appeared when presented at exhibition. On an Alu-Dibond museum quality print, each of the blue puddles was coarse in texture, and one could run their fingers over them. It made the blue, glimmering pools of water stand out from the white expanse and presented an almost three-dimensional effect, bringing the scene to life.
Standing in the warm breeze at the top of the landscape panorama in Pamukkale, free and at peace, I felt like I was flying, lost in the white. Yet I was here now in Istanbul, and it was time to awake from the innocence of memories.
I emerged from the cafe late, on the day that I walked down to the sea. I came back to the Bosphorus, and gazed at its swaying waves.
I loved Istanbul, and I did not want to say goodbye. On the swaying waters of the sea, I saw a ferry boarding to leave before darkness fell. The ferry started to move, and a man jumped across the water and onto the ferry, as it moved out, the man now on the boat and hanging on to the railing, now on the sailing seas, along for the ride.
I thought of the beauty of continuing travel and all of the adventure that would await, seeking a new life. And the words of a poem by Lord Tennyson came to me, here on the silent seas, ready like Ulysses to set sail against the tempest of time:
“I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world."
As I walked along the sea, here on the Bosphorus shore, I looked out at the passing boats. I considered all of the sailors and explorers in history who had died while crossing the Bosphorus and had sunk to the bottom of the sea. I knew that this was like all my sunken hopes and dreams. And in the haze of memory, Shakespeare spoke:
“Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange”.
It was true that I had changed too, with everything that I had experienced on my journey becoming a part of me forever.
I considered the memories of all that I had seen. In their light, in their darkness and in their innocence, I had known the beauty of this dying world.
And I considered the words of Orhan Pamuk and the history of all that has gone by:
“With time, life—like music, art, and stories—would rise and fall, eventually to end, but even years later those lives are with us still, in the city views that flow before our eyes, like memories plucked from dreams”.
Read on for the next chapter via the link below, as we are about to enter our journey together to - UZBEKISTAN......